How To Be Friends With Yourself.

I genuinely love the silence of solitude. It is refreshing. It allows one to be with oneself. You see, most people make the mistake of confusing solitude with loneliness. These two are very different. I would say that solitude is being with oneself, and being lonely is being by oneself. A subtle yet vital difference that makes loneliness unbearable but solitude a pleasure.

Yes, being lonely or suffering from loneliness can breed solitude. The moment you are hanging with your friends and realise nothing connects you to them anymore, that is loneliness manifesting itself. That moment when you are in the company of people, but their company has no value to you, is the first sign of loneliness.

When this happens, I implore you to welcome the feeling. This is the initial pain you feel in your legs before experiencing the runner’s high. When hit with this emotion, the first thing that many of us do is try to find some social compensation for it. We will perhaps compromise some of our values to accommodate those of those around you. In most cases, we would have to get out of ourselves to avoid feeling lonely.

And this makes sense. Science tells us that we are social creatures. Hence, the worst form of punishment is solitary confinement. Society tells us that we live as a unit, that we fit in somewhere in the cobwebs of our social class. Thus, to be a loner is to be the outlier, the weirdo who is not accepted in the social setting.

Because to be a loner, in most cases, you disagree with your social group. You disagree about their idea of having fun. You disagree about their idea of love. You disagree about what clothes to wear. You might even disagree about who to call God. Being a loner places people in this outside pocket where they are welcomed by none.

And it is this feeling of being unwelcome by the world that most of us avoid. But if we hold on, we would realise that the feeling is only temporary. This feeling of being by yourself is the first stage of being with yourself.

Unfortunately, many of us have never been with ourselves. And because of this, many of us do not know who we are. We are what society tells us we are. We are what our parents tell us we are. We are what our friends tell us we are. We are what our siblings tell us we are. We are what church, work, or life stresses tell us we are. Very few people actually know who they truly are.

Because when that loneliness hits, instead of spending time with ourselves, we would rather find another outlet to find meaning. If we lose meaning or connection within our social class, we will seek this meaning or connection with our alternative social groups, like churches or work.

I remember when I stopped going to church. The best decision I ever made for myself. You see, during that time, the church was controlling my thoughts. Anything that controls your thoughts controls your life. And so, the church was controlling my life.

My life became church. Everywhere I went, I spoke about the church. I remember calling out one guy because he was a bad influence on one of the church girls I was going with. Why did I call him out? Because he was telling us that she had the best throat in Bloem. So, in “protecting my fellow sister in Christ”, I opted to call out this “heathen”. Not once did I stop to think about the girl or how she managed to obtain such a moniker in the first place.

Indeed, there are plenty of examples that I could use about the church and how brainwashed I was by it. It is when I decided to leave the church that I noticed that almost all churches operate the same. It is when I left that I realised just how far I was from myself.

What was crazy about this is that I came home that same year. My family, being religious, did not accept my reluctance to attend church. I can vividly recall my dad threatening to kick me out of the house because in his house, all go to church. I can vividly recall my mom refusing to pray as a family because I no longer went to church.

These acts only strengthened my dislike for church, as it proved to me how cult-like churches are. I have seen, and even encouraged, people to give their monthly salaries to the church in the name of “planting a financial seed.” Looking back, I cringe at how foolish I was.

My leaving the church threw me into a world of loneliness. My entire life was church. Now that I was no longer in the church, I was forced to be alone. So-called “brothers and sisters in Christ” all abandoned me. Moving from Bloem to back home translated my separation from the church physically. Truly, during this time, I was alone.

You see, I have always felt loneliness in some shape or form. Growing up, my friends could do well in sports, and I couldn’t. They were cool and socialable, and I wasn’t. What united us was schoolwork and the occasional PlayStation tournaments.  But there was that gap between myself and friends, even to this day (and as adults without the schoolwork and PlayStation tournaments, that gap is as wide as the distance between Earth and the Moon), it still exists.

I realised that I escaped this loneliness through gaming and reading. Talking about it never helped me. Each time I tried talking about it to my parents or siblings, they dismissed it as a childish affair. Yet to me, to was real. But I managed to live with it.

However, this time, when I left the church and I was back home, it was different. Just because I stopped going to church, it did not mean I stopped believing in God. Cause concurrently, at the time, the girl that I loved with all my heart and soul had found her way in the sheets of an ex who used her as a one-night stand. It seems the Lord was throwing me into the den of lions.

Being, arguably, at my lowest of the low in my entire life, I had no option but to be with myself. It is during this time that I began my first blog. Little did I know that with me sharing my feelings on a daily basis was actually me being alone with my thoughts. After all, that blog had an audience of 1: me.

Because the church failed me and growing up, those around me never took me seriously, I forced myself to look into the mirror to make sense of the pain I was feeling. By looking into the mirror, this was my first experience of pure solitude – the feeling of being with yourself.

It was not an overnight affair. It took years. In between, some events delayed the healing process. But because my initial response was to be alone with my thoughts, the gift of solitude was well received then.

It was when I realised that indeed there is beauty in solitude. Solitude offers one the ability to be friends with oneself. Yes, sometimes the thoughts are negative. Not long ago, I was on the verge of letting it all go and transcending to the next life. However, the gift of solitude allows you to have that conversation with yourself that is not filtered through the lens of others.

One unexpected benefit of this is that you will actually spend your social currencies wisely. You won’t form or engage in meaningless interactions with people. Because at the seat of your heart, you will know that these meaningless interactions are what steal your peace and joy.

Here’s a simple example of what I mean. Recently, I was hanging out with my friends. We were having lunch. I had thought it would be me and my friends. That through this lunch, we would hang out and foster our brotherhood. I was wrong.

Later that afternoon, we were joined by others. I was properly annoyed, but because of the unwritten social rules that govern how we interact with one another, I refrained from showing my annoyance. I was cordial and participated in the conversations. In doing so, I lost count of the drinks I had.

Later that night, I got home. I did not expect my mom to be waiting for me. To cut this long story, the next morning my mom sat me down. I do not remember much of what she said. But I do remember how I made her feel: disappointed.

That very same morning, I vowed never to hang out with my friends again. Cause my mom is far more important than they. Most guys will call this nonsense. They would call me a mom’s boy. They will call me all these names and insults that generally will degrade or humiliate one into submission within their social group. But, being alone, being my own best friend, these names and insults do nothing to me. And the reason for this, through periods of solitude, I am effectively no longer within their social group.

Yes, I still refer to them as my friends. If an important life event happens, they would be the first to get the invites. But through me being my own best friend, I do not need them in my life. Through actively going through periods of solitude over the years, I have learnt to live life by myself whilst fostering far more important relationships, like that with my family.

Solitude is beautiful. It is through solitude that one can be their own best friend. Do not resist that initial resistance to being alone. That is the emotion of loneliness trying to save you as a human. It is trying to remind you that you are a social creature. Resist it. Persist through it. For at the other end is God’s greatest gift to mankind.

Remember, even Christ had to walk through the desert alone to remember who He was. Embrace solitude and you will be rewarded with treasure greater than gold. You will be rewarded with your own mind.